Teachers ask parents to join lobby against growing class sizes
Calgary teachers will be encouraged to send postcards to the Ministry of Education this fall, detailing the number of students in their class and how many have special needs, ahead of next spring ’s provincial election.
The lobbying effort aims to increase awareness around the growing complexity of classrooms, not just in terms of size, but the widening range of special needs students placed in regular classrooms, from kids with physical and learning disabilities to those with severe behavioural issues.
“Complexity in the classroom is becoming more and more difficult for teachers,” said Bob Cocking, president of the Alberta Teachers’ Association Local 38, which represents Calgary public school teachers.
“Teachers are facing larger class sizes, they ’re interpreting a variety of special needs and behavioural challenges and they’re adapting curriculum to a wide range of abilities in their classrooms.”
The postcard campaign was a provincewide effort last year. But if ATA locals want to follow up again this year, they can just ask for most postcards, Cocking said, adding that it’s more important than ever for teachers to let the province know about changes in their classrooms, particularly if the size of their classes has grown.
“This is important in terms of the upcoming election,” Cocking said. “I haven’t heard any politicians talking about education. I’m hearing a lot about pipelines and the economy. But education is important too.”
Cocking hopes to meet with representatives for the Calgary public teachers Local 38 in early October to relaunch the postcard campaign and get them involved in the lobby effort.
Last year, tens of thousands of postcards were sent from teachers across Alberta informing the minister of the size of their classrooms.
This year’s initiative comes on the heels of class-size numbers released by Alberta Education this spring confirming as many as 45 to 47 students in several core high school courses across Calgary.
In response to this spring’s scathing auditor general report criticizing the province for failing to monitor class sizes in spite of more than $293 million in funding last year, Alberta Education posted the 2017-18 data to be more transparent.
The information reveals an even deeper problem for students unable to access individual attention, says Greg Jeffery, president of the Alberta Teachers’ Association.
“Say you have 40 students in a junior high classroom, where typically students are in class for 40 minutes. That means even if the teacher is able to get to everyone in that class, they will still only be able to give them one minute each.
“That’s not nearly enough to develop the relationships you need to. Teaching is highly relational, you can’t really teach a student until you know them.”
Jeffery is also encouraging parents to engage more closely with their kids’ schools, find out how many students are in their children’s classrooms and reach out to their provincial politicians ahead of the 2019 election.
In the NDP’s $8.4-billion education budget released this past spring, up to $6.2 billion was geared toward educational instruction, including the hiring of 663 new teachers and 366 support staff.
But the ATA has argued those numbers fall significantly short of the 2,000 new teacher hires it has sought to address growing concerns about class size, undersupported special needs and rising costs.
During the same week the budget was released in late March, the ATA released a poll showing 80 per cent of Albertans would support additional funding to reduce class sizes, and nearly 90 per cent would support more money for students with special needs.
After a last-minute funding injection from the province, the CBE confirmed the hiring of 149 educators in its spring budget, including 106 teachers and 43 educational assistants.
“But that doesn’t solve the problem,” Jeffery said. “Especially when you look at the size of the CBE — at 250 schools, you’re not even getting one new teacher per school.”
Since the release of class size numbers in response to criticism from the auditor general, Education Minister David Eggen has vowed to address classroom complexity.
“We recognize that you have to look these things square in the eye,” Eggen said at a curriculum roundtable in Calgary recently.
“You have a much more complex classroom than you might have seen 20 to 30 years ago, and we have to be more sophisticated in our approach.”